Name: A Tale of Two Puerto Ricos
Uploaded: 2020-03-07T16:20:44.000Z
Duration: 8 min 52 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is still in peril.

Participle clauses

Huge swathes of the island are still without power, running water or access to medical care.

Basic passive voice

Experts estimate that it would take years before these services are restored island-wide.

Much of the blame has been placed on FEMA for a slow response in comparison to recent

disasters on the mainland, but recovery from a disaster of this complexity and scale has

proven more challenging than anyone anticipated, and filling the gaps between an over-extended

public sector and a suffering populace falls on private citizens.

Robert Anderson is a Puerto Rico resident of four years.

The eye of the storm came in south of El Yunque, swept up toward San Juan, and out to Arecibo.

Everything on the right-hand side is what we call the dirty side of the storm.

This isn't his first time in a disaster zone.

With a military and telecom background, Anderson worked on repairing damaged cell phone towers

Some might be tempted to label him a disaster capitalist, seeking lucrative government contracts

for his expertise. But as Anderson finds himself in the middle of the humanitarian crisis,

he and his associates are developing a variety of pro bono recovery projects that target

They may or may not have power, but basic services are in place.

They're able to get food. They're able to buy things.

And when you look outside of the San Juan area, you can go 15 minutes from here and find areas

Today, he's put together a boots-on-the-ground mission to provide medical care to some of

the island's most isolated and vulnerable residents.

Steve Birmbaum is one of Anderson's business associates.

He offered an extra car and a set of hands.

So we received an initial report from a nurse that was out in the area.

We're headed to the Northeast region of Utuado for some people that are in need of urgent

Dr. Sally Priester is a physician from San Juan.

She filled a van with medical supplies at her own expense and brought along a team of nurses.

Google Maps estimated our first destination to be a 90-minute drive,

but it didn't account for obstacles like this.

Our first stop was the home of an 82-year-old, blind Vietnam Veteran.

His roof was blown off by the storm and he's been living alone in a back shed for nearly two months.

His cane actually got broken in the storm so he's limited mobility.

We called the VA. They're going to get him set up with what he needs, get him stabilized so he can

then be transported either to an evacuation center or off the island.

It's when the chain gets broken when those families that are connected to them leave

the island or take off, these guys get left at the end of the road and it's tough.

FEMA was not officially part of Robert's team and their arrival caught everyone by surprise.

Their job here was to survey and report back to their superiors and did not come with medical

People think that FEMA is there to hand out bottles of water and that's not what they do.

FEMA has a role to play. They have a very specific role.

They bring in tractor trailers with pallets of things, but they're a big machine and there's

gaps in that thing and you're seeing one of the gaps here, and we help fill that role.

These guys were in a bad situation before and now they're struggling for real basic things.

One of the risks that you run is people going from fear to hopelessness.

Those are the folks that we're trying to reach.

I'm lucky enough to be able to communicate with folks in FEMA, the state of Puerto Rico.

For a ghost, Robert makes his presence well known.

Not only was he the de facto leader of the mission,

now with FEMA in tow, he created his own maps to survey storm damage.

And delivered them to FEMA HQ free of charge.

Perhaps that's how he managed to earn himself a coveted FEMA badge without actually working for them.

And its these relationships that allow him to operate more efficiently than

We're able to resolve problems at a different level.

Our next stop was on a mountain top, a family of 11, struggling to care for their special

needs brother in what was left of their house.

Probably we are the first health team to come and visit this family.

The difficulty with this is the patient cannot be alone.

The most important thing is that you need to take care of the chronic disease beside

the disability because they have been not going to a doctor and a doctor has not coming here yet.

After maybe 54 days, it's not getting better.

The only way that you can be able to see that is coming to the ground, drive and see the

On this stop, we caught word that a man living alone at the edge of a jungle was in need of care.

We decided to take a little detour, come up here and check out and see what's going on.

One of the challenges is to find those people that are

at the end of these roads that need help.

I'm asking about why he's alone right here.

He says "life happens. I'm here by myself."

If you do this, you need to have passion for what you can do.

It's said in disaster response, in emergency response that the real first responders are your neighbors.

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A Tale of Two Puerto Ricos

chronic

struggle

treat

shed